1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to musical score displays that display musical scores on screens for musical performance apparatuses such as player pianos.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, electronic musical instruments such as player pianos install functions of displaying musical scores on screens of displays such as liquid crystal displays.
FIG. 12 shows an example of an image of electronic musical score data that are displayed on a screen of a display panel of a player piano. Herein, three staves, notes and musical symbols in musical notation are displayed in an upper area of the screen, while graphical images and control buttons are displayed in a lower area of the screen.
A performer (or user) who plays the player piano operates the control buttons displayed on the screen to change over images of the musical score, so that the next page of the musical score is displayed on the screen.
If the performer uses both of his/her hands to play the player piano, it is necessary for the performer to temporarily stop playing the player piano and change over the image of the screen. Alternatively, the performer should rapidly change over the image of the screen even if the performer does not break the musical performance on the player piano. In other words, the conventional player piano needs manual operations for changing over images of the musical score on the screen, hence, the performer feels difficulty in continuously playing the player piano because the performer cannot concentrate completely on playing the musical performance.
Other than the aforementioned manual operations for changing over images of the musical score on the screen, the conventional player piano needs manual operations, using the control buttons, for setting or changing tone volumes and tempos in performance. To set or change them, the performer may have a similar problem due to intermittent suspension of the musical performance on the player piano.
It is an object of the invention to provide a musical performance apparatus installing a musical score display apparatus whose operations can be easily controlled by voice commands spoken by a user.
The present invention provides a musical score display apparatus that is installed in an electronic musical instrument such as a player piano and that is designed to automatically display and change over images of electronic musical score data on the screen. A user""s vocalization (or user""s voice) is input by means of a microphone and an A/D converter, so that the input voice is subjected to signal processing to produce voice data. The voice data is then subjected to voice analysis such as phoneme analysis to determine an arrangement of phonemes that are included in the input voice and that highly match one of the prescribed words listed in advance in a word dictionary. Recognition data is created based on the arrangement of the phonemes and is subjected to command interpretation with reference to prescribed commands that are listed in advance in a command database. For example, the command database registers a command xe2x80x98NEXTxe2x80x99 for designating a next page of the musical score to be displayed on the screen and a command xe2x80x98BACKxe2x80x99 for designating a previous page of the musical score to be displayed on the screen. Herein, one of the commands that highly matches the recognition data is chosen and is used to control images of the musical score being displayed on the screen.
The arrangement of the phonemes can be compared with words of a song to designate a prescribed position of the musical score, hence, the corresponding page of the musical score is automatically displayed on the screen.
Other than the arrangement of the phonemes, it is possible to extract a string of pitches, by which retrieval is performed through the electronic musical score data to find a string of notes corresponding to the extracted pitches respectively. Hence, the corresponding page of the musical score is automatically displayed on the screen.
In addition, it is possible to detect a tone volume or a tempo from the input voice. Thus, musical performance is automatically controlled based on the electronic musical score data in response to the detected tone volume or tempo.